This calendar is maintained as a personal project and has no connection to the Boston Globe. No payment or promotional consideration is required or accepted for inclusion. To send information about a concert, master class, lecture, or other new-music event, email me via the link on the About page.

April 28, 2015

Album review: Colin Stetson & Sarah Neufeld, Never were the way she wasBoston GlobeApril 28, 2015

Proclaimed "the Neil deGrasse Tyson of the avant-garde saxophone world" in a concert review by some wag who used to write for The New York Times, Colin Stetson has made a beautiful new record with his Arcade Fire colleague and touring mate Sarah Neufeld. You can hear one track via the Soundcloud clip embedded above, and if gorgeous, evocative, contemplative, and creative pan-genre instrumental music holds any appear for you, then you should definitely try to hear the rest.

April 19, 2015

Sound artists Jason Lescalleet and Olivia Block collaborated for the first time in the world premiere of Sonorous Vessels, a new piece inspired by and extending upon Alvin Lucier's Music for Piano with Amplified Sonorous Vessels, on Saturday night at 3S Artspace in Portsmouth, NH. I wrote about Lescalleet's series and this particular concert in the latest installment of my Newer Music column for the Boston Globe last week (column here), added more insights from Block here on the blog a few days later (post here), and then made the quick, pleasant drive up from Boston to Portsmouth for the event.

A terrific performance. Photos now…words to come.

Block Six, the very pleasant restaurant and bar at 3S Artspace. Mostly populated by diners who aren't headed to the performance in the next room.

Olivia Block's gear, partial view.

Olivia Block's gear, another partial view.

Jason Lescalleet explaining his performance series and the evening's program.

As a part of the column, Block — whose most recent solo album, Karren, was among 2013's most extraordinary achievements — kindly consented to answer a few questions about the project via email. As these things go, only a very tiny portion of her response made it into the final edit. But what she has to say about Lescalleet and the project is well worth reading, so with her permission, I'm posting the entirety of her response here.

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Jason told me that while the two of you have shared programs before, you've not collaborated directly. What appeals to you about his work?

What I value most about Jason’s work, particularly in his recorded compositions, is his incredible sense of composition and pacing. I also like that the sense of humor he uses in his presentation and titles belies his serious and absolute expert approach to composition. To me, he is a lot like Luc Ferrari in that his work is beautifully crafted, juxtaposes mysterious sound spaces in intriguing ways, and includes a sense of levity, but always has an underlying darkness. In Jason’s case I would use the word “bleak” instead of “dark,” though. I also appreciate Jason’s inclusion of (what I think of as) the epiphonographic sounds of each medium — the hiss of tape, or the burned sounds of digital overdrive.

What do you look for in potential collaborators, and what made you suspect that Jason would be a compatible match to your own methods and goals?

In general, when I think about working with a collaborator, I go one of two ways. I look for someone who has a sensibility that I trust, or maybe a similar sensibility to my own, so that I know that I don’t have to worry about the basic issue of whether or not I will like or trust the choices that this person will make during the process.

Or I will look for someone who makes work in a genre or instrumentation different than my own. For instance, I like the idea of working in different genres of music, particularly pop music, and shaping the sound of it or bringing something different to it.

I would place Jason in the former category, as an artist who has an artistic sensibility that I trust. We like similar sounds, and I appreciate his sense of pacing, so I think playing together will feel pretty comfortable/natural.

I also like that Jason's performed/live work can in some cases sound different from his studio work, which is an approach I feel like we share. In live situations, my sense is that Jason focuses on the relationship he can create with the acoustic space by working with tonal feedback, utilizing the room shape with subwoofers, and emphasizing the dynamics. These qualities are additions to the the material he plays and manipulates on the tapes.

Jason performs in a subtly dramatic way by standing and moving from tape machine to tape machine instead of merely sitting at a table and turning knobs or staying behind a laptop — there is definitely an acknowledgement of the audience.

I think a lot about performance vs studio work. In live performance it’s important to create a relationship between gesture, object and sound. I like thinking about the audience as existing in the same space and helping to shape the sound of the room tone with bodies and breath and movement.

Jason explained how the Lucier angle came about, but could you tell me something about your own interest in Lucier's music and his impact on your creative work?

To me the most influential quality about the work of Lucier is his emphasis on spacial acoustics/room sound, and the acoustic qualities of materials. I also like that sounds seem to exist for the sound's sake in Lucier’s work. His scores include directions for very close listening to single sounds as part of the music-making process. For example, the performer might be directed to play a long tone, then listen for certain overtones or timbral qualities in the sound, and make subsequent decisions based upon what is being heard. The emphasis on listening in his text scores shares some common threads with Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening Meditations, although my impression of Lucier’s text scores is that they are more like scientific investigations rather than meditations. I remember hearing a performance of Vespers in a large concert hall, and noticing the way that the echolocation sounds were activating corners of the space behind me. The piece introduced an idea about sonic depth of field that continues to influence me, particularly in my multi-speaker compositions.

In recent years I have been following my own investigations into the acoustic possibilities of glass. There are piles of broken pieces of frosted glass on the strings inside the piano, and glass jars in various locations on the wood and tuning pegs and strings. I tap them gently with soft mallets, creating shimmering broken glass sounds, using the damper pedals to create resonance with the glass timbres inside the piano or to stop the dreamy decay suddenly. So for me, the Sonorous Vessels project is a way to develop the interests I have already started to play around with, and to work with the added element of processing that Jason will bring. The most important part of the preparation for this performance with Jason is the extra day of rehearsal time in the space with the piano that 3S has generously set up for us. The performance is so much about this room sound and this glass and this piano. The emphasis on site specificity is very much in the spirit of Lucier.

April 14, 2015

The sixth episode in the continuing saga of Newer Music focuses on Jason Lescalleet, a performer whose work made an impression on me years ago and still does. I recall vividly instances of Lescalleet's visceral, almost violent approach to tape-loop manipulation during New York City encounters with nmperign and Joe Colley, and I've appreciated the recordings he's made since: in particular a brilliant 2CD solo set, Songs About Nothing (my year-end pick for the best record of 2012 in Time Out New York), and rich, mysterious duo projects with Kevin Drumm and Graham Lambkin, all for the Erstwhile Records label.

The article focuses in particular on This Is What I Do, the monthly series of full-length CDs that Lescalleet is releasing via his own record label, Glistening Examples, and on a new quarterly concert series starting this Saturday, April 18, at 3S Artspace in Portsmouth, NH. The series, curated by Dan Hirsch, concentrates on duo projects, including events with Drumm (July 11), Lambkin (October 10), and Aaron Dilloway (December 12). But even among that company, the first concert stands to be something very special indeed: the world premiere of Sonorous Vessels, jointly created by Lescalleet and Olivia Block, and meant as a continuation of Alvin Lucier's Music for Piano with Amplified Sonorous Vessels.

Coming tomorrow: More from Olivia Block about this new collaboration, exclusively here.

Also coming tomorrow: Jeff Witscher, featured in Newer Music in February, offers an alternative to your Tax Day doldrums with a performance at Boston Cyberarts Gallery in Jamaica Plain (141 Green Street). He's sharing the bill with Eric Frye and Roy Werner (G.S. Sultan); the show gets underway sometime around 8pm, and will set you back a mere $10. More here.

April 13, 2015

I'll admit it, I was nervous going into this one. I hadn't written about jazz regularly since my days as the assistant editor of Jazziz, fully 15 years ago – an odd development, really, since access to jazz and improvised music was what caused me to move to New York City in 1993 in the first place.

Sure, I did some small pieces here and there for Time Out New York, but reviewing concerts is a different thing than profiling artists or previewing events. Going into this specific assignment, I also knew that Vijay Iyer is an artist whose work has attracted a lot of attention and ink, meaning that whatever I wrote wasn't likely to float under the radar.

Happily, the gig gave me a lot to think about, the writing came easily, and the response has been gratifying. I remain happy to defer to the excellent Jon Garelick as the principal jazz writer for the Globe (read his review of Iyer's new CD, Break Stuff,here). But I'm also eager to augment Jon's efforts, whenever and wherever it's useful to do so.

One more thing: Henry Threadgill is among the greatest American composers of all time – period, full stop.